Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/145

Rh in, God's glory, the world would not have lost the Science of Christianity.

“What went ye out for to see?” A person, or a Principle? Whichever it be, determines the right or the wrong of this following. A personal motive gratified by sense will leave one “a reed shaken with the wind,” whereas helping a leader in God's direction, and giving this leader time and retirement to pursue the infinite ascent, — the comprehending of the divine order and consciousness in Science, — will break one's own dream of personal sense, heal disease, and make one a Christian Scientist.

Is not the old question still rampant? “When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?” But when may we see you, to get some good out of your personality?

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (St. John). This great truth of God's impersonality and individuality and of man in His image and likeness, individual, but not personal, is the foundation of Christian Science. There was never a religion or philosophy lost to the centuries except by sinking its divine Principle in personality. May all Christian Scientists ponder this fact, and give their talents and loving hearts free scope only in the right direction!

I left Boston in the height of prosperity to retreat from the world, and to seek the one divine Person, whereby and wherein to show others the footsteps from sense to Soul. To give me this opportunity is all that I ask of mankind.