Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/182

154 whom is all salvation from sin, disease, and death. The Science of all healing is based on Mind — the power of Truth over error. It is not the person who gives the drug nor the drug itself that heals, but it is the law of Life understood by the practitioner as transcending the law of death.

I shall scarcely venture to send flowers to this little hall if they can be made to infringe the divine law of Love even in thought. Send flowers and all things fair and comforting to the dear sick, but remember it is not he who gives the flowers that confers the blessing, but “my Spirit, saith the Lord;” for “in Him was life,” and that life “was the light of men.”

My Beloved Brethren: — At this, your first annual meeting, permit me to congratulate this little church in our city, weaving the new-old vesture in which to appear and to clothe the human race. Carlyle wrote: “Wouldst thou plant for eternity? Then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man. If the poor toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil for him in return that we have light, freedom, immortality?” I agree with him; and in our era of the world I welcome the means and methods, light and truth, emanating from the pulpit and press. Altogether it makes the church militant, embodied in a visible communion, the foreshadowing of the church triumphant. Communing heart with heart, mind with mind, soul with soul, wherein and whereby we are looking heavenward, is not looking nor gravitating earthward, take it in whatever sense you may. Such communing