Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/142

114 words of the Master, “Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

Christian Science teaches: Owe no man; be temperate; abstain from alcohol and tobacco; be honest, just, and pure; cast out evil and heal the sick; in short, Do unto others as ye would have others do to you.

Has one Christian Scientist yet reached the maximum of these teachings? And if not, why point the people to the lives of Christian Scientists and decry the book which has moulded their lives? Simply because the treasures of this textbook are not yet uncovered to the gaze of many men, the beauty of holiness is not yet won.

My first writings on Christian Science began with notes on the Scriptures. I consulted no other authors and read no other book but the Bible for about three years. What I wrote had a strange coincidence or relationship with the light of revelation and solar light. I could not write these notes after sunset. All thoughts in the line of Scriptural interpretation would leave me until the rising of the sun. Then the influx of divine interpretation would pour in upon my spiritual sense as gloriously as the sunlight on the material senses. It was not myself, but the divine power of Truth and Love, infinitely above me, which dictated “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” I have been learning the higher meaning of this book since writing it.

Is it too much to say that this book is leavening the whole lump of human thought? You can trace its teachings in each step of mental and spiritual progress, from pulpit and press, in religion and ethics, and find these progressive steps either written or indicated in the