Pulpit and Press | Page 3

the public libraries of the principal cities, colleges, and Universities of America; also the same in Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Greece, Japan, India, and China, in the Oxford University and the Victoria Institute, England; in the Academy of Greece, and the Vatican at Rome.
This book is the leaven fermenting religion; it is palpably working in the sermons, Sunday schools, and literature of our and other lands. This spiritual chemicalization is the upheaval produced when Truth is neutralizing error, and impurities are passing off. And it will continue till the antithesis of Christianity engendering the limited forms of a national or tyrannical religion yields to the church established by the Nazarene prophet and maintained on the spiritual foundation of Christ's healing.
Good, the Anglo-Saxon term for God, unites Science to Christianity. It presents to the understanding, not matter, but Mind; not the deified drug, but the goodness of God--healing and saving mankind.
The author of "Marriage of the Lamb," who made the mistake of thinking she caught her notions from my book, wrote to me in 1894, "Six months ago your book, SCIENCE AND HEALTH, was put into my hands. I had not read three pages before I realized I had found that for which I had hungered since girlhood, and was healed instantaneously of an ailment of seven years standing. I cast from me the false remedy I had vainly used and turned to the Great Physician. I went with my husband, a missionary to China, in 1884. He went out under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal church. I feel the truth is leading us to return to Japan."
Another brilliant enunciator, seeker, and servant of Truth, the Rev. William R. Alger of Boston, signalled me kindly as my lone bark rose and fell and rode the rough sea. At a conversazione in Boston, he said, "You may find in Mrs. Eddy's metaphysical teachings, more than is dreamt of in your philosophy."
Also that renowned apostle of anti-slavery, Wendell Phillips, the native course of whose mind never swerved from the chariot-paths of justice, speaking of my work, said: "Had I young blood in my veins I would help that woman."
I love Boston, and especially the laws of the state whereof this city is the capital. To-day, as of yore, her laws have befriended progress.
Yet when I recall the past,--how the gospel of healing was simultaneously praised and persecuted in Boston,--and remember also that God is just, I wonder whether, were our dear Master in our New England metropolis at this hour, he would not weep over it, as he wept over Jerusalem! Oh, ye tears! Not in vain did ye flow. Those sacred drops were but enshrined for future use, and God has now unsealed their receptacle with His outstretched arm. Those crystal globes made morals for mankind. They will rise with joy, and with power to wash away, in floods of forgiveness, every crime, even when mistakenly committed in the name of religion.
An unjust, unmerciful, and oppressive priesthood must perish, for false prophets in the present as in the past stumble onward to their doom; while their tabernacles crumble with dry rot. "God is not mocked," and "the word of our God abideth forever."
I have ordained the Bible and the Christian Science text-book, SCIENCE AND HEALTH WITH KEY TO THE SCRIPTURES, as pastor of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston,--so long as this church is satisfied with this pastor. This is my first ordination. "They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures."
All praise to the press of America's Athens,--and throughout our land, the press has spoken out historically, impartially. Like the winds telling tales through the leaves of an ancient oak, unfallen, may our church chimes repeat my thanks to the press.
Notwithstanding the perplexed condition of our nation's finances, the want and woe, with millions of dollars unemployed in our money centres, the Christian Scientists, within fourteen months, responded to the call for this church with $191,012. Not a mortgage was given nor a loan solicited, and the donors all touchingly told their privileged joy at helping to build the Mother Church. There was no urging, begging, or borrowing, only the need made known and forth came the money, or diamonds, which served to erect this "miracle in stone."
Even the children vied with their parents to meet the demand. Little hands never before devoted to menial services, shoveled snow, and babes gave kisses to earn a few pence toward this consummation. Some of these lambs my prayers had christened, but Christ will rechristen them with his own new name. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast Thou perfected praise." The resident youthful workers were called BUSY BEES.
Sweet society, precious children, your