Georgina Tennant, C.S.B., of London, England
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The
Mother Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
God's healing power can be proved to be ever available and applicable to every human need, Georgina Tennant, C.S.B., of London, England, said last night in a Christian Science lecture in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Mankind has need of the peace, health, and harmony which only a spiritual understanding of man's unity with God can bring, Mrs. Tennant stated.
During the course of her lecture she told of an acquaintance who was healed of a serious cancer through spiritual means alone.
A former Second Reader of The Mother Church, Mrs. Tennant is currently on extensive lecture tour as a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship. Her lecture, which was given under the auspices of The Mother Church, was entitled, "Christian Science: The Understanding of Man's Unity With God." She was introduced by Theodore Wallach, C.S., First Reader of The Mother Church.
The lecturer spoke substantially as follows:
It is nearly two thousand years since Christ Jesus taught his disciples in the temple at Jerusalem and on the hillsides of Galilee. He taught them that God is our Father: loving, powerful, all-providing; that He dwells with man. He taught them that man expresses God and that God's presence and power can be proved to be ever present and ever available.
When Philip asked Jesus to show him the Father, the Master replied: "Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?" (John 14:9.) Jesus also taught that anyone who understood and expressed the nature of God as he did would, in like manner, manifest the power of God to heal mankind, to redeem humanity from sin, disease, poverty, death, and corporeality.
The beloved teachings of the Master Christian have comforted, inspired, and sustained his followers spiritually through the ages, but the acceptance of physical healing as a natural outcome of obedience to them practically ceased centuries ago, though through the years there have been many cases of healing by faith and prayer.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, had deep faith in the teachings of Jesus. She had faith that the sick could be healed by God at any time. Through years of patient struggle with sorrow and sickness, before her discovery of Christian Science, she witnessed several healings through this faith, but without understanding the reason for the healing or how to practice it intelligently and methodically.
Mary Baker was brought up in a home of culture and integrity: her parents were respected in the community for their wisdom and sympathy. From early years she loved God and longed to understand Him better. The visits of neighbors seeking advice and comfort from her parents increased her love of humanity, which was second only to her love for God. She had a standard of education uncommon for women in her day. Through the tuition of a brilliant brother, she learned Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and loved to study natural philosophy, logic, moral science, and English. The Bible was her companion. She learned to think, to think spiritually. She was thus a studious Christian whose vision always lifted to the promise of the Master that the works which he did, those who believed on him should do also.
In middle life, through an accident, she sustained serious injuries, and was given up to die by her doctor and friends. She asked that she might be given her Bible and be left alone. Her friends waited sorrowing in an adjoining room. She opened her Bible at Matthew, chapter 9, verse 2, and read the account of the man who was healed of palsy. She received such a clear revelation of the truth of being that she was instantaneously healed.
In her book "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy recounting this event says, "As I read, the healing Truth dawned upon my sense; and the result was that I rose, dressed myself, and ever after was in better health than I had before enjoyed" (p. 24). She also says elsewhere: "My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury that neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself, and how to make others so" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 24).
From that time, Mrs. Eddy devoted herself, through the study of the Bible, to discovering the laws of healing which Jesus used with such success. As she discovered these laws, she put them into practice and proved that they healed as effectively as in Jesus' time. She was a woman alone, without worldly wealth or influence, but her mission was clear to her and she knew herself to be prepared by God to give the truth she had discovered to humanity. Nine years after her discovery, she published her textbook, "Science and Health."
The Discoverer of Christian Science, in her search for the Principle of Jesus' healings and of her own healing, found her lifelong interest in God richly rewarded. Her definition of God on page 465 of Science and Health is the result of her prayer, study, and revelation. She says, "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." To know God by these names is to grow to understand Him and to be better able to prove His ever-presence.
That God is incorporeal makes clear His availability, everywhere and at all times, just as the multiplication table is incorporeal and so is available on the top of the highest mountain or in the lowest depths of the sea. That God is divine gives humanity recourse to that which is higher than itself, unchanging in its love and constant in its strength. That God is supreme gives expectancy of good. God is good the very name God means good. God is supreme; what is there to fear? True expectancy is confident of God's supremacy; fear, or mistaken expectancy, is the outcome of the belief that God is not supreme. For God to be infinite precludes the possibility of any room for evil, sickness, sin, or death. That God is infinite makes clear the fact of the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3). There can only be one infinite.
Mrs. Eddy was leading her students to an understanding of God, to be able to follow Jesus' teachings intelligently as well as devotedly. To know God as Mind lifts the mystery from such sayings of the Master as "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30); "The Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10). Jesus' consciousness was one with the divine Mind; it was wholly good. He knew man as God had made him, spiritual and perfect, and the power of his spiritual understanding healed the sick. God, Spirit, was real and present to him where matter appeared to others. God, Soul, informed him of conditions and possibilities, rather than physical sense, which presented limitations, disease, and sin to his disciples. God, divine Principle, was operative and effective in his entire experience. If his need was for transport, he was "on the other side"; if for food for five thousand, the five loaves were abundance; if for proof that disease and death are unknown to divine Mind, healing and restoration were demonstrated. Jesus was never separated from God, from Life, Truth, and Love. They were his very being. From his childhood he knew that God was the only life; he said he must be about his Father's business. The light and power that were with his every step, the compassion, tenderness, and blessing that moved his every deed, showed forth gloriously that God is Truth and God is Love.
The Christian Scientist is an earnest student of the Bible. Together with the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, it is his textbook to the understanding of the great facts of being and their power to heal the sick. It is the King James Version of the Bible which Mrs. Eddy appointed, with Science and Health, as pastor for all Churches of Christ, Scientist; it is the King James Version that the student uses basically. Many who were Bible students before becoming interested in Christian Science testify to the wonderful illumination which the teachings of Christian Science bring to the Bible. This illumination reveals how the understanding of God through the ages gave man power to perform so-called miracles. It is the belief that the healings of Jesus and those in the Old Testament were miracles, and not the outcome of a right understanding of the law of God, that has replaced spiritual healing with material methods. The discovery of Christian Science has brought back to the world the methods of Jesus and his early followers.
In the first chapter of Genesis we are told that God made man in His own image and likeness. In order, therefore, to understand man and so heal the sick and the sinning, it is necessary to understand the nature of God, His ever-presence and omnipotence to accept it as fact and reject that which is unlike it as without presence or power. It is only through the understanding of God that man can be truly understood. Matter can tell us nothing of man in the image and likeness of God.
Christ Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). What other truth would this have been than the truth of God and man, as he understood it himself? God, as revealed through the Scriptures and Christian Science, is quite unlike what the senses tell us of man. We learn through spiritual sense that God is All-in-all; that He is Spirit; changeless, illimitable, indestructible; that He is Love; wise, just, and merciful; that He is Mind; intelligent, all-knowing, the source of all true motive: that He is Soul; beautiful, gracious, immortal; that He is Life; harmonious, eternal, complete; that He is divine Principle, governing and upholding His creation; that He is Truth, before whose light the darkness of ignorance disappears. How different is this from the pictures of material sense, where change and decay are deemed inescapable, where cruelty lurks and is liable to strike in the form of war, disease, lack, aggression; where motive is so often personal gain rather than brotherly love.
Christian Science teaches that we must change the basis of our thinking from the evidence of material sense to the evidence of spiritual sense; the evidence of what God is, where He is, and what He knows. This evidence comes as revelation, through prayer and study. It is an individual experience. In Science and Health (p. 12) we read that Jesus' humble prayers were "deep and conscientious protests of Truth, of man's likeness to God and of man's unity with Truth and Love." Can we do better than follow his example?
We know from the Gospels that Jesus would go up into a mountain, apart from his disciples and followers, and spend long hours in prayer to God. These hours of "deep and conscientious protests of Truth," protests made in opposition to the material evidence of disease and sin, gave him strength to prove the healing power of Truth.
Mankind has need of prayer. We all need these times of deep affirmation of our true spiritual being as well as the heart's yearning for God's help. We need to affirm on behalf of ourselves and the human race that God is the only creator, that He is good and has made man in His image and that therefore man expresses or reflects good only. Man is inseparable from God, from Love, Life, Mind: he is therefore incapable of hatred, jealousy, malice, stagnation, decay, false appetite. He cannot lose his faculties, because they belong to Mind. He does not make mistakes nor can he be the victim of the mistakes of others, because he cannot be separated from the perfect, divine intelligence of eternal Mind, God.
We can maintain that the truth of our prayer or realization of man's unity with God is a universal fact, a fact which has power to lift the human race out of its racial, national, and class strife and to reveal a world governed by God, by divine Love. In this enlightened community opportunity comes to all alike, to be accepted by each individually. Lack or limitation is unknown, because substance is seen to be spiritual. The individual who knows himself to be the reflection of God has true self-respect. He loves to work for he knows that "my Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (John 5:17). This understanding love of work governs the human experience, bringing progress, adjustment, and right reward. We know that our own clear expression of divine Mind is the most important contribution we can make towards universal well-being. The brotherhood of man is thus attainable on earth when God is seen to be the only Father of all men and His will is sought, loved, and obeyed by His offspring.
Prayer is communion with God, a consciousness of His presence. It is a time for laying aside of erroneous thinking of obsessions and fears, of human opinions and material so-called laws. When Jesus had prayed on the mountain, he would come down and heal the sick. In Christian Science we prepare ourselves through prayer and prove our prayer.
Christian Science treatment is prayer. He who would heal makes "deep and conscientious protests of Truth, of man's likeness to God and of man's unity with Truth and Love." He denies power and intelligence to that which is unlike God and applies this prayer to the situation and awaits the proof of these facts with confidence. If faced with a serious problem one would very likely ask a Christian Science practitioner for help in the solution of it. They are there for that purpose and their consecrated study and experience in Christian Science will bring healing; and remember the present fact is always man in the image of perfect God and this fact can be demonstrated.
If you go to a practitioner for help or if you work a problem out for yourself, be sure that you are changing your thinking. To refuse to have anything to do with drugs or doctors may evidence a degree of faith in Christian Science to heal you and a turning away from matter, but it is not enough. Our textbook says, "Only through radical reliance on Truth can scientific healing power be realized" (Science and Health, p. 167). A dictionary says of the word "radical" that it means pertaining to or proceeding from the root, hence original; fundamental; thoroughgoing; extreme; as a radical change. It you are having difficulty with a problem consider well whether your thinking is undergoing a radical change or whether you are protecting some of the roots of error and are unwilling to part with fundamental beliefs.
The Psalmist says, "But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth" (Ps. 86:15). Man in the image and likeness of God expresses these qualities. The Christian Scientist progresses who watches to see how closely his own thinking follows this pattern. Sometimes a lack of a divine quality will hold up response to Christian Science treatment.
Jesus expressed the nature of God more clearly than any other human being. How amply he expressed those qualities just referred to: compassion, graciousness, long-suffering, mercy, and truth. The Gospels often tell us that Jesus moved with compassion, did so and so. He was not moved by desire for fame or by impatience, or by intellectual interest in his healing, but by the nature of God, whose expression he was. The Father that dwelt in him, God, did the works. God gave him power over the enemy, whatever it might be; He gave him rich reward through His inseparable companionship.
It is the Christ, the divine nature of Jesus, which has never left the world and which comes now as in olden days to bring healing and enlightenment. The Christ is the activity of God in human consciousness. Mrs. Eddy says: "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness. The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual, yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death" (Science and Health, p. 332).
The Christ comes to the receptive heart with startling effect. To those who seek the Christ, though the way may be hard, there is certain redemption. It was not Jesus' personal presence which healed the sick, but his Christliness, his manifestation of man's sonship with God.
To that which was unlike God, Jesus was outspoken in his denunciation. Christian Science likewise does not ignore or tolerate evil. It teaches that the remedy for evil of all sorts lies in individual spiritual thinking. Spiritual thinking is light. If you go out on a starless night with a small flashlight, can what appears as a great weight of darkness resist the small beam of light, or can it put it out? So Christian Science teaches that evil whatever its claims to magnitude and power is the darkness of ignorance; it cannot resist the advent of spiritual thinking.
There can be no mass salvation, no mass healing. Where the Bible tells us that Jesus healed the multitude, you will generally find that the crowd had made individual effort to reach him. The individual has dominion over his experience as he learns the truth of being and is faithful to it. Working to bring his own consciousness nearer the divine, he will be moved by compassion and full of mercy and truth. There is no self-absorption in compassion, no indifference in mercy, and no dissembling in truth. God saw everything that He had made and saw that it was very good. How grateful mankind can be to know that all good is from God and that God knows only the good we do and knows us always as altogether good. Thus it is through prayer, watching, and working that he grows toward "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).
The Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," was written by Mary Baker Eddy through revelation. Through thirty years she revised it, that its meaning might be more clearly expressed and its full and final revelation of the truth of being be preserved. The truth contained in this book has great power. There are one hundred pages at the back of the book telling of healings through reading or studying the book only. This book may be bought or borrowed at the Christian Science Reading Room. It reveals the allness of Spirit, God, and therefore the nothingness of matter. It gives instruction as to how to apply these facts to human experience with redemptive effect.
I know a woman whose testimony was recently published in the Christian Science Sentinel. She knew nothing of Christian Science in 1940. About this time she found that she had a growth, and her family doctor and surgeon said she must be operated upon, that nothing else would remove it. Her mother and her father's sister had both died of cancer, and the verdict of doctor and surgeon confirmed her fears that she had the same disease.
She was a woman who naturally turned to God. She felt that the doctors could do nothing for her. As she saw the situation, it was a matter of life and death and not just of health or sickness; so she felt that the result lay in God's hands. In reading her Bible she came one day to the verses in Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths" (Prov. 3:5,6). She waited prayerfully for God to show her what to do. She was soon led to try Christian Science, and borrowed the textbook. She read slowly and earnestly, and before she had finished the chapter on Prayer she realized that God had not created cancer, therefore it had never been true, in the case of her mother, herself, or of anyone else. This realization destroyed her fear of the disease, and not long afterwards the growth diminished and disappeared. Here was the faith which was receptive to spiritual truth and ready to yield to spiritual understanding. The Christ, Truth, as revealed in the Christian Science textbook healed her.
Christian Science healing is not faith healing. In Science and Health will be found the true Science of being. This Science is not humanly philosophical; it is not theoretical; it reveals to mortals man's true status as the son or image of God, and this status, as it is claimed and demonstrated, redeems mortals from the ills of the flesh which would alarm and bind them.
In this true status of man is found security. To be spiritual is to be untouched by matter, to be constantly governed by Spirit. Security then is more than a state of absence of fear; it is a state of spiritual thinking which destroys fear. It is the understanding of man's unity with God and of the fact that he is entirely governed by God. We might take a simple illustration. Sometimes shops or restaurants have walls of looking glass. Perhaps you are sitting chatting to a friend while you await the arrival of other friends. Your back is to the door, but you watch for your friends in the looking glass, quite confident that you will see when they arrive and what they are doing. Now when we are instructed in Christian Science, things of everyday life like this so often open thought to metaphysical facts and their power.
Perhaps you are separated from someone you love; he may be with the forces in battle, or he may be struggling with sickness. How are you going to think of him? Through the understanding of Christian Science, which Mrs. Eddy has likened to a mirror, you can watch him in God and get your news of him through your understanding of God.
You wonder how he may be. Well, he is made in the image and likeness of God and how do you understand God to be? You know that He is Life itself; so His image must express life. The Bible speaks often of God's joy and glory; so His image must be happy. You know God to be perfect; so His image must be perfect, that would mean healthy. The Bible speaks of God's "saving health." The image of God reflects God's strength; it could not express weakness. God's image expresses freedom; it could not be in bondage. Man in God's likeness is under no sentence of doom, because he can never be separated from God's saving health. To think in this way destroys anxious thought and is such a wonderful support to the loved one. It takes from off him the burden of mortal thinking that he is in danger or going through a difficult experience and restores him to his real place as the child of God, inseparable from His goodness and cared for by His love. You will find that you do not get disturbed if there are no letters; you get your news from God, and after a bit you will find that you have much more faith in the veracity of your news from God than in anything mortal mind tells you.
We read in "Miscellaneous Writings": "The sweet, sacred sense and permanence of man's unity with his Maker, in Science, illumines our present existence with the ever-presence and power of God, good. It opens wide the portals of salvation from sin, sickness, and death" (p. 196).
There is no phase of human experience where Christian Science cannot help. It brings healing and deeper affection to human relationships. To attempt to heal a problem of relationship from the basis of two or more persons who need to be reconciled, is to start to reconcile without a reconciler. But to turn from the evidence of material sense to the one God, the one Mind, and man as His image, never separated from Him, brings a law of healing and reconciliation into operation at once. As God is All-in-all, He is Father and Mother of all His creation; His expression is obedient to His will and can never be separated from the harmony of spiritual being. We need to see that in Truth relationship is the relation of man to God, always harmonious, productive of good, joyous and free. Humbly to maintain this truth and to understand that it governs the situation will heal the problem.
To do so requires selfless obedience to God; it demands that the children or parents, husbands or wives, employees or employers, in the flesh, are to be looked at anew, in their true spiritual being, as expression of the one eternal, loving Father. It means constant watchfulness and prayer that you may desire to leave the old concept for the new. There is no question of psychology, as commonly understood, in this approach to the problem of relationship; it is a matter of the spiritual understanding of true relationship and faithfulness to it. To know that in truth you are the expression of God and to demonstrate this truth as far as you can, will give you wisdom and understanding from the divine Mind to help the human situation. It is not an understanding of the ways of the human mind that is needed, but the recognition of the presence, power, and oneness of divine Mind. Mrs. Eddy says, "Love is the liberator" (Science and Health, p. 225). An understanding of the Love that frees has irresistible power to free and to bring harmony to human relationships.
Mortal mind says that money is supply and that money has to be inherited or earned, that therefore supply is dependent on someone else's earnings or on your job which you might lose. We learn in Christian Science that Spirit is substance and that spiritual ideas and spiritual qualities give us our supply. In Jesus' feeding of the five thousand, he did not send for more matter, but he gave gratitude to God for the present abundance of spiritual ideas. He required an expression of obedience, humility, and expectancy spiritual qualities from the multitude. His sense of supply was not just enough with a struggle, but such abundance that the surplus was twelve baskets full. There was no end to the good which God gave and, as it always must, material sense had to yield its false evidence and bear witness to the truth. Jesus' supply came from his understanding of the affluence of God. Our supply comes from God; therefore it is spiritual, not material. We have just as much of God as we can understand and use.
As long as we believe that spiritual qualities such as joy, intelligence, love, and wisdom are human attributes which we have as a person or have not, they will be limited in our experience, and so our sense of supply will be limited. When we see that these qualities are God's attributes and that man reflects them, we begin to find that we can use more joy than we thought we could, more love, more intelligence, more wisdom, more understanding. Our job is one which is never uncertain but is full of progress and fresh views; it is the expression or reflection of God, of Love, Life, and Truth, of Mind and Principle. No world disturbance or business recession can take this job away from us. No age or circumstance can leave us destitute of supply and unable to be useful. At these times the demand for our work as a reflection of God is greater, the supply of spiritual ideas more affluent. Man lives in the kingdom of Spirit. His privilege is to obey its laws and prove its government so that all may see.
To approach financial problems from this angle gives at once a sense of dominion over them and an eagerness to prove these spiritual facts as the determining factor in human experience. When looking within one's own thinking for the remedy, resentment, discouragement, and fear disappear, and there comes instead a desire to give of the great good which God gives His child. The human opportunity needs to be sought and cherished; it cannot remain hidden to an individual thinking in this way.
As God is Principle, it will be seen how important is integrity in the working out of a financial problem. Strict honesty, diligence, perseverance, and order are basic to a true sense of supply and the expression of abundance. Debt is a problem to be resolved; it should never be allowed as a normal condition.
A material standard of living may become an idol. God is Principle, and He gives wondrous good to those who love Him and serve Him. He sets our standard of living, and it is spiritual. Its beauty, happiness, integrity, comfort, and security are forever unfolding. It includes all right ideas and excludes that which is unlike God.
It will be seen that Christian Science does not neglect sickness or condone sin. It treats both intelligently and lovingly through the scientific understanding of God and man. The sick are properly cared for while under treatment. Experienced Christian Scientists take training to fit them for the work of caring for the sick who are working out a physical problem in Christian Science. The remedies applied in Christian Science treatment are spiritual, not material; and they operate in human consciousness to dispel the sense and evidence of disease or sin. Treatment in Christian Science is the application of the truth that makes free.
Mary Baker Eddy is not only the Discoverer of Christian Science, she is also the Founder of the Christian Science organization and the Leader of the Christian Science movement. She knew the inestimable value to mankind of her discovery, and instead of merely doing healing work herself and possibly teaching a few students, she saw that the truth she had discovered should be protected and disseminated for the sake of posterity. She therefore founded The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, and made provision for branches all over the world.
The Mother Church is governed by the Church Manual, quite a small book of By-Laws directing the activities of the organization. Mrs. Eddy had a deep respect for her Church Manual. The By-Laws came to her through inspiration as they were needed. Her unshaken conviction that these By-Laws would care for her Church, through all time preserving The Mother Church, its branches, the authorized literature, and the work of the Committee on Publication, is a leading to each student of Christian Science that the Church Manual should be loved, studied, and obeyed.
Mrs. Eddy says, "Of this I am sure, that each Rule and By-law in this Manual will increase the spirituality of him who obeys it, invigorate his capacity to heal the sick, to comfort such as mourn, and to awaken the sinner" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 230).
The Manual provides for the various activities of The Mother Church and its branches; it gives the order of service, tells how officers are to be appointed, and so on. It contains an original and lucid form of organization for an institution whose purpose is the liberation of the human race from the bondage of materiality and its distresses. This organization is highly democratic. Each branch church is self-governed. The Manual can be read, borrowed, or purchased by anyone at a Christian Science Reading Room.
The Church Manual is more than rules for an organization; it is a spiritual animus to each student who loves and obeys it. It requires each member of The Mother Church to recognize his own obligation to God, to the Cause of which he is a member, and to the human race. As the Manual is loved and studied, the student will find church membership so vital that it is his primal interest. This spiritual light enables him to be a better businessman or businesswoman, a better father or mother, a better citizen, and it enriches the activities of the branch churches with the warmth of divine Love to heal and comfort those in need.
The Church Manual directs the activities of the Church of Christ, Scientist; it also guides the individual Christian Scientist. It makes clear that prayer and spiritual effort are needed, that the spirit of the Christ may permeate the Church of Christ, Scientist. It is this spiritual thinking that gives to the services and other activities their healing power.
Jesus knew that Church could only be known to a spiritual state of consciousness. He hailed Peter's heavenly inspiration of the Christ as the rock on which his Church would be built. He knew that against this idea of unity with God no evil could prevail, and he recognized this understanding as the power that would liberate mankind.
The Christian Scientist worships only God. He has come to understand Him as a living force in his everyday life through the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. His gratitude therefore to Mrs. Eddy is deep and loving. In common with most informed people, he regards her as a great revelator of Truth and a great religious leader, and he feels privileged to call himself her follower. She has in all her writings followed the teachings of Christ Jesus; so through his study of Christian Science the student finds that he knows Jesus better and that he can see him more clearly as the Way-shower. This way of Christly understanding and demonstration is a way full of light and joy. Sorrow and suffering came to the Master, but he always met them victoriously with the clear recognition of the Father's will and of his own power as the Son of God to manifest that will. He knew the Father's will for His beloved Son to be health and holiness, and he healed the sick and the sinning; he knew the Father's will to be abundance, and he fed the multitude; he knew the Father's will to be immortal life, and he overcame death and the grave, thus proving man's eternal unity with God. His teachings have lost none of their vitality. Through the lifework of Mary Baker Eddy, humanity can again understand the presence of the Christ and follow in Jesus' footsteps out of the darkness of materiality into the health, peace, joy, and plenty of spiritual being.
Mrs. Eddy writes in a letter: "May the divine light of Christian Science that lighteth every enlightened thought illumine your faith and understanding, exclude all darkness or doubt, and signal the perfect path wherein to walk, the perfect Principle whereby to demonstrate the perfect man and the perfect law of God" (Miscellany, p. 187).
[Delivered Dec 1, 1955, in The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, and published in The Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 2, 1955. This lecture was also published in The Milwaukee County News of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 13, 1954.]