ABOUT one year ago I first attended a Christian Science testimony meeting. It was in a large and beautifully lighted church building, which was crowded to the doors. I was surprised to see such a great gathering at a modern mid-week religious service and to be informed, on inquiry, that the church was thus filled every Wednesday evening, summer and winter. Soon after this meeting, which seemed like an overflow from the day of Pentecost, I had the privilege of listening to a lecture from Judge Ewing. His evangelistic, sweetly persuasive message of "Peace and good will" awakened my mind to a consciousness of the reasonableness of Christian Science. Gradually overcoming old prejudices and common misapprehensions, I began to realize something of the import of the book, Science and Health, by Mary Baker G. Eddy. At the close of my first year in Christian Science, I find I have been made a partaker "of the inheritance of the saints in light." These familiar words in Colossians, like all the rest of the Bible, have been illumined with a new meaning.
First: This inheritance is the secret of prevailing prayer. Jacob knew this secret when he wrestled at the brook Jabbok and in one night became Israel, a Prince with God. He had remarkable success thereafter. Opposition vanished from his path like mist before the morning sun. Moses knew this sublime secret, and "stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind." Joshua knew it, and the city of Jericho fell before the Lord's people on the seventh day at the sound of the trumpets. David knew it, and boldly said to the giant of Gath, "The battle is the Lord's." Elijah knew it, and at evening, on the mountain-top, he prayed, and both the sacrifice and the altar were consumed. Daniel knew it, and said to the king, "My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths." The apostles and the saints in all ages knew it. Well for mankind that it is not wholly lost in this materialistic age. It is revealed in Christian Science. It is an absolute faith that "with God all things are possible."
Second: This inheritance is an understanding of God as "Our Father." It is simply trust in God. Worry is the universal disease. I have seen men in nearly every part of the globe, and most of them appeared to look at life through a melancholy glass, darkly, as I did. Nowhere do men and women suffer so keenly from imaginary ills and from worry as in America, the most prosperous country on earth. Here everything, small and great, past and future, is a subject of worry. When orthodox people can think of nothing else, they needlessly worry about the salvation of Socrates and other good heathen! Some worry about the necessary changes in the creeds, none of which, not even the so-called Apostles' Creed, is older than the third century. Others still worry about the doctrines of "Second Probation" for the multitudes in Japan, China, India, and elsewhere, who never heard the Gospel, the "Good News." In Christian Science there is no such thing as worry. It is perfect peace. It makes clear "the light of the knowledge of the glory of God." This glory is omnipotent, unlimited love. With an all-encompassing optimism, Christian Scientists fearlessly and triumphantly devote themselves to the work of to-day and take no anxious thought for to-morrow. They exultingly sing from their hymnal the lines of Whittier,—
