Quite recently I met a gentleman on a street-car who handed me a little tract which at first I declined. On second thought it occurred to me to accept his offering, giving him in return two Christian Science reprints which I happened to have in my pocket: "The Brotherhood of Man," and "There is Rest and Peace on Earth." The gentleman graciously accepted them and professed a strong admiration for the sentiments which were suggested by the topic of the former, and so we parted with mutual promises to read the literature thus exchanged.
In examining the tract which had thus come to my hands, I found that it was circulated by a sect of which I have no knowledge, and that it set forth a sermon delivered in a Western city from the text, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." The text and some of the points of the sermon brought to my consciousness a more complete sense of universal salvation than I had ever before experienced. I knew that the tenets of Christian Science include this declaration: "We acknowledge that man is saved through Christ—through divine Truth. Life, and Love, as demonstrated by the Galilean prophet," etc. (Science and Health, p. 497), but I had never before understood wherein he had declared the future for the children of God in such certain terms.
A little further study brought out the statement of Isaiah: "And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." And Luke, in describing the work of John the Baptist in his preaching of repentance in the country about Jordan, writes of this prophecy: "and all flesh shall see the salvation of God." It would seem clear that the use of the word "flesh" was not intended to signify that carnal man could, or ever would, stand in the presence of God, since Paul tells us that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."
