The Master's words, from his: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" while he, a child, tarried at Jerusalem, to the tearful expression of victory over self as he prayed in Gethsemane, "Not my will, but Thine, be done"—his words, all his words, his work, his whole life was one grand anthem of consecration to God. As we retrace his journey from Bethlehem to Calvary, we realize, indeed, that his Father's business was his work and his Father's will, his impulse.
We half forget the bloody persecutions of the Inquisition when we catch again a glimpse of the Truth in the consecration of the martyrs. It was the consecration of Luther that moved on the Reformation. Looking back, we see that the progress of every reform is measured by the consecration of its leaders and adherents.
How many of us to-day, are breathing and living and working because of the consecration of one who, guided by the same star that led the wise men of old. has followed obediently, labored untiringly, and conquered gloriously? Thank God, thank God for the consecration of our Leader!
First of all, only a high and holy cause can now wake man to consecration. Only God's cause, sustained by the assurance that "His spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the sons of God." Consecration, to-day, with us, demands a cause whose benevolent purpose is as broad as humanity's needs, as high as man's possibility, as deep as the mines of understanding, as sweet as God's love. Here is just such a cause, a cause to which has been given a "new name," "Christian Science," a science which demonstrates again the breadth, the height, the depth, the sweetness of the healing Truth of Christ. Are we ready to follow in the footsteps of the Master?
What marks the consecrated follower? not mere enthusiasm, mere enthusiasm marks the fanatic; it is a personal quality born of emotion, while he who consecrates himself is the unselfed person, the person whose whole nature is a sanctuary.
Let us for our own growth look fairly at this consecrated, unselfed man. "God's candle shines upon his head, and by His light he walks through darkness." At one with God's great cause, his heart, head, hand, are at God's service.
His heart is God's. The old human loves, so-called, that proscribed his usefulness, that limited and personalized his affections, are "clothed upon" by a holy garment "white as wool," illumined, lifted, consecrated, transfigured.
He thinks for God. His knowledge of material things, his place and power in the world, in medicine, in law, in art, in music—is become a rod in the hand of the man who has consecrated himself to this holy cause of Christian Science. Every theory of philosophy, by its somethingness or its nothingness, either confirms or denies, and so supports, this Great Revelation.
What a rest it must be to a mind wearied with searching for Truth in the many schools of human philosophy, and finding only that which satisfieth not. what satisfaction after such a quest to find at last the true philosophy whose smallest manifestation leads on to all Truth, whose smallest demonstration leads up to God. Here is rest from search and the beginning of consecrated work. The counterfeit philosophies are, like the rods of the magicians, swallowed up by the true philosophy of Wisdom, Truth, and Love— God. And the man who has proved their nothingness can handle them into rods by which others shall be touched and brought into an understanding of the true philosophy. And so, again, is the wrath of man made to praise God. All intellectual culture at the first glimmering of this great Science, great in its simplicity, seems unworthy, and we cast it down and run in fear of its nothingness and falsity, but we must go back and handle it and prove it a rod upon which to lean. So let us bring all our offerings in the way of intellectual attainments and have them purged and consecrated.
The hand is God's. First believing, then understanding, then demonstrating that all strength, all activity, all skill, is from God, there is no limit to the good we can do for Christian Science by subserving all physical activity and skill to this great cause. In Love there are no menial duties; and Love is not manifest in the inharmonious, chaotic household, where domestic duties are performed as an inanimate, compulsory task in materiality, but where it is understood and demonstrated that through consecration the hand reflects God's power, moves by His activity, is sustained by His love.
And we must consecrate the tongue. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." The heart of consecration knows only Love and the tongue speaketh only love: severity, censure, and bitterness find no expression. The tongue is purged of its uncleanness nor is it "halting and slow of speech," but emboldened to speak the Truth, knowing that God's word must be uttered, and that God, Truth, Love, sustains the utterance. Now we, my dear coworkers, can test our fitness or unfitness to help fill up the ranks of Christian Science by the progress we are making in the destruction of self, by the surrender of the old for the new, by the complete consecration of heart, head, hand, and tongue.
