In the Gospels two remarkable genealogies are recorded of our Master, Christ Jesus. St. Matthew traces a line of material ancestry from David to Jesus, thus testifying to the slow advance of human thought through many generations, or spiritual re-births, till it approaches a point of coincidence with the Divine; or, more exactly, till it reaches a point of self-dissolution, and the Divine is manifested just in so far and wherever the human has disappeared. The other genealogy is wholly Divine, and tells of the Light that emits light,—the Logos, or Divine Reasoning, which is ever with the Father, and shines in the darkness of earth through the One conceived of God. This is the real genealogy of us all, as God's ideas, and it is also the true origin and history of Christian Science. But it is natural, as so large a part of our thought is still human in spite of the spiritualizing influence of Science which is daily lifting thought above the clods to blossom in higher spheres of activity, for us to feel a deep interest in that building up of consciousness that has finally given way to let in so glorious a radiance on all humanity.
They who see the spiritual signs of the times,—who love America, her Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers,—whose ancestors have fought, not only in a material war for independence, but who have bent their mental sinews to the solving of the greatest problems that can ever confront man,—What is God? and What are man's relations to Him?—such that Christian Science may be the historical fulfilment of what this nation stands for and promises,—a development as yet nationally unacknowledged, but none the less real to the prophetic thinker.
That American institutions are superior to all others in many respects; that the general standard of morals is higher here than in any other country, and the average intelligence greater,—this we devoutly believe. Nevertheless, America is not all she should be, nor all that the civilized world has a right to expect her to be. To America the hungry eyes of idealists, social and religious, have looked for the solution of their problems. Here in a virgin soil, free from conservatism, free from precedent, noble thinkers planted the highest ideals of Europe, which were expected to blossom toward a millennium of altruistic civilization, where advanced mechanical invention would be but the servant of a nation governed both civilly and morally by grander systems than the world had ever seen put into practice.
