March 1, 1897.
Beloved Mother and Teacher:— I am in receipt of your last beautiful and instructive letter. Words fail to express the joy with which I receive your announcement that personal teaching is to be suspended for the period of a year, and that your illuminated book, "Miscellaneous Writings," is to do the work heretofore so imperfectly done by us all as field-workers and teachers. It is a source of great comfort and satisfaction to me in this hour to say with the sincerity of conviction that no step that you have ever advised delights me as much as this. To me it is the most conspicuous evidence, next to your establishment of the impersonal pastor in our Text-books, that ''divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need" that cries aloud for salvation from the popular misconceptions of Christian Science existing in the minds of teachers.
The mental unfolding that the study of your last book has brought to me has been truly startling." It has taken me back to the spiritual import of the Text-book, and all your other writings, with wonderful force and power. From what I know of the field and the misconceptions that have worked their way into teaching, and the general menace that personality, love of leadership, and too much explanation of Christian Science through human argument and mentalities which reflect moods and mental colors that hide, rather that: illuminate, the Spirit and letter of Christian Science, the more I see the wonderful wisdom reflected through you at this great hour in the history of our movement. The book uncovers with great force and Scientific analysis the subtle workings of the human mind, and will undoubtedly do as great a work for us all as field-workers, and former teachers, as for inquirers and students in general. The ethics of Jesus' parable of the laborers who entered the vineyard during the late hours of the day and received the same payment as those who had toiled from morning, are becoming more clearly understood, and consistent and spiritually-minded Christian Scientists must see that worth, scientific standing, and value to our Cause are not so much dependent upon the date of the students studying with you as upon the present standing of the individual Scientfically, spiritually and mentally. Personally I rejoice that I can say I feel sympathetically and intelligently in touch with this step, and I am glad I can say this just at the close of my first independent class, the personnel of which, from both the human and Scientific standpoint, is a rich reward for labor. It is a class made up of choice hearts and talented character. One is a regular writer on the New York sun. There are two former Hebrews, a Mr. B and a Miss M., the latter one of the finest Hebrew scholars I have ever seen, and in character a most valuable acquisition to the movement. Another most chaste character, a former Unitarian and disciple of Herbert Spencer; another a lawyer, formerly an agnostic; another one of our leading musicians and organist of the Church of the Messiah of this city. They are all spiritually-minded, and promise almost without exception to be active workers in our Cause, and some of them expect soon to devote their entire time to the work. From the depths of my heart I thank God I was enabled to say to them to-night I considered that the subtlest claim of mesmerism of this hour was that your writings, including the Text-book, were not self-interpreting, and needed the elucidation and explanation of personal teachers to make the spiritual meaning clear. Individually I feel that your new book will do more to break this general claim than anything that we have, and I think the sooner this claim is destroyed the better for the race morally, physically, and spiritually. "While I have been sitting in classes and teaching for a number of years past to a greater or less degree, and while I have heard class after class taught, the more clearly I have come to see that the greatest work of Christian Science was yet to come, and I now see how. Personality, personal leadership, envy, rivalry, competition, and the false claims of me and mine will be forced to the wall as the spirituality that is resident in this new book is received by the body in general, and the lines that have heretofore existed between students of students and Christian Scientists who have become such through the perusal of your works, will no longer exist.
