Will those beloved students whose growth is taking in the Ten Commandments and scaling the steep ascent of Christ's Sermon in the Mount, accept profound thanks for their swift messages rejoicing over the Twentieth Century Church Manual? Heaps upon heaps of praise confront me, and for what? That of which I said in my heart, it will never be needed; namely, laws of limitation for a Christian Scientist. "Thy ways are not as ours." Thou knowest best what we need most, hence my disappointed hope and grateful joy. The redeemed should be happier than the elect. Truth is strong with destiny, it takes life profoundly, it measures the infinite against the finite. Notwithstanding the sacrilegious moth of time, eternity awaits our Church Manual, which will maintain its rank as in the past, midst ministries aggressive and active, and will stand when those have passed to rest.
Scientific pathology illustrates the digestion of spiritual nutriment as both sweet and bitter. Sweet in expectancy and bitter in experience, or the senses' assimilation thereof, and digested only when Soul silences the dyspepsia of sense. This Church is impartial, its rules apply not to one member only, but to one and all equally. Of this I am sure, that each Rule and By-law in this Manual will increase the spirituality of him who obeys it, invigorate his capacity to heal the sick, to comfort such as mourn, and to awaken the sinner.
Pleasant View, Concord, N. H., September 7, 1903.
