Once upon a time, there lived in a country village a man with the untroubled eyes and placid smile of a little child. The villagers called him in their quaint parlance "a natural." For over forty years he lived there among them, his body tall and strong, but his intelligence never seemed to advance beyond that of the children who loved to ride upon his broad shoulders. He was a very happy man because everybody loved him, and, again, because he loved everybody and because he loved everything, too! No smallest creature that ran or crept or flew ever suffered a moment's pang because of him, and the birds of the forest would perch on his outstretched hand and pick grains from its palm. It chanced one day that he was shown a small gold coin, and the meaning of money dawned upon him in a measure. If he should take that coin to the village store, the storekeeper would give him, in return for it, anything he wanted. The coin was just about the size and color of a buttercup's petal, and always after that, to this child-man, the buttercups that gilded the roadside in summer were all coin of the realm. In their season he carefully stored up a supply of the little burnished disks, and because his wants were few and simple, and because they loved him, the villagers never failed, so long as he lived, to take the yellow petals in payment for whatever he asked.
This little story seems suggestive of the bewilderment that has settled down upon the human consciousness, making it to stumble in terror through the centuries, believing the false to be true, the needless to be inevitable, looking for help to that which is helpless, and blinded all the while to the might that is sustaining and governing the universe. Men and women would not have chosen to wear out their years in sickness, sin, and discouragement if they had known that quite other conditions were theirs, to be had for the seeking. It is the hopeless thought that all these untoward circumstances are imposed or allowed by a mighty God, who, for inscrutable purposes of His own, has bound us, helpless Ixions, to a wheel that never ceases to crush us. Before such a false belief, hope, courage, endeavor, seem palsied, and long-time sufferers often await the touch of death to transmute this poor existence into a Nirvana of coveted unconsciousness. Nevertheless, throughout the history of the race an heroic instinct has always struggled, more or less consciously, against such thraldom. Men and women have tried to settle into the apathy of resignation, but for every one who has succeeded in deceiving his own heart, hundreds have fought against the fiat which would doom the innocent and destroy the guilty in the same cataclysm. The rebellion, the revolt against such an order of things, the conviction that such things should not be possible in a world created and governed by a just and loving God, has been the propelling force which has produced in all ages men and women who have caught glimpses of a far different underlying reality, as the traveler saw the stars through the misty ghosts in Ossian's tale. In varying dimness, the seers of the world have perceived that in place of the whirling vortex in which humanity has felt itself caught and tossed in wildest confusion, lies all around the serene calmness of law, "unhasting, unresting." Naturalists have named the law, life. They have watched it sustaining, producing, perpetuating, always maintaining order in the unvarying procession of genera and species. Then, like little children who fear to climb, they have fallen back, thrown away the gold coin just within their reach, and contented themselves with its withered counterfeit, a life that ends in death, a law that culminates in anarchy. Poets have named the law, love, and have wept to see it change, grow cold, and come to an end. Thinkers have named it truth, and translated it, each in his own terms, until the world is full of warring sects, quarreling over the vestments of the Lord they crucify. Sincere men and women doubtless they were and are,— as I write, the honest face of Huxley comes before me,— but because no fame nor happiness nor success that is built upon an untruth can ever stand, nations have perished with their gods, and human theories are sinking one after another into silence. Meanwhile, God, who is the source of law, who is undying Life— changeless Love —the one Truth, reigns forever, unconscious alike of misinterpretation and misbelief.
Perhaps in no respect has mankind erred more widely than in thinking that the government of Truth may be evaded. It sometimes happens that the tenderness of a father or mother is mistaken by a foolish little child for weakness, and we "children of a larger growth" have not always caught the note of authority which underlies the loving appeal of our Father -Mother God. Listen "Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings;" "Give ear, O my people, to my law "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat;" "Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live;" "I will . . . teach thee: . . . I will guide thee;" "Hear, ye that are far off, . . . and, ye that are near, acknowledge my might," "Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see:" Not the words, these, of fruitless entreaty, that may go unheeded, like the solicitations of a beggar. The invitation, the loving bidding of Truth, is, like the invitation of royalty, a command, not to be gainsaid nor disobeyed. It is not a matter of choice whether or not obedience shall be rendered. True, the day of obedience may be deferred. Men and women may please and deceive themselves for a time in the thought that it is theirs to obey or not, as they choose, but so surely as Truth forever speaks, so surely is approaching for every individual the hour when he will obey, and gladly acknowledge what Cardinal Newman calls "the everlasting face-to-face with God." The decree that creates man in God's own image and likeness is no more operative than is that other decree, spoken through the prophet Isaiah, "I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth, . . . and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear."
Matthew Arnold, in the preface to his "St. Paul and Protestantism," says, "Mankind must needs draw, however slowly, towards its perfection." The law of gravitation knows no exceptions, and its prototype, the law of spiritual gravitation whereby man is attracted to God, the Sustainer of his being, is no less invariable.
I once watched a little boy playing with a magnet. For a while he amused himself by seeing the bits of iron spring to the steel, then he began experimenting. He held a piece of thin paper between the magnet and the iron, and the iron leaped to its attraction just the same. Little by little he increased the thickness of the paper, till at last the iron was no longer affected. If his magnet had been stronger, more resistance would have been overcome, and one can imagine a lodestone so large and powerful that perhaps no obstacle would be able to defeat its action. The parallel is obvious. There are no degrees of power in Truth. It never falls short of omnipotence. One may deny its attraction, may even defy it, may build up between it and one's self a barrier of prejudice, self love, selfwill, that may seem all but impenetrable, but steadily, calmly, irresistibly, through all phases and vicissitudes, Truth is day by day drawing humanity up and out of its dreamworld; and thus God, Truth, touches the human consciousness through Jesus of Nazareth, the great Teacher, and through the work of our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, who walks among us to-day in her gracious womanhood.
This spring, when I planted my nasturtiums, I put the first of them very deep, so that my mother, standing by, said, "Those seeds will never come up, you are planting them much too deep." I put the rest nearer the surface, and covered them all up, and waited through the pleasant days. When the right time came, the little green bent fingers began to push the soil away, and one by one the tiny plants appeared, those planted last coming first, but after a little the others coming too, till every seed had lifted itself "in newness of life" into the light. Not one failed to obey the call of the springtime. It took longer for some of them, for they had more to overcome, deeper darkness, a heavier weight of the earth but always above was the sun and the rain and the dew, calling, "Come up hither," and they every one obeyed. So shall each individual consciousness hear Truth say, "Come up hither." The roads may differ that each must take. Some seem to walk along "primrose paths," though always there are thorns and briars to beware of and to uproot others have to hew their way through solid granite blocks of educated beliefs, fears, hopes, and hates. But if the roads differ, the goal is the same for all, and sooner or later, through storm and stress, joy and triumph, all things working for good, the child of God will find himself in the image and likeness of his Father-Mother, and God's will shall "be done in earth, as it is in heaven."
